Category: Handfuls of Home

Slide 2006 Robert Gribi carrying gas (sorry for the quality of the pic) Outside another storm spills water across the roads. The wind is temporarily tangled in the trees and not rushing frantically about but the weather forecast predicts a wild day here on the North Coast. We had 4 inches of rain in the last 24 hours and more

We shed pieces of our lives—leave them lying around. Every hill home has some detritus. Items we plan to use again but don’t–ugly objects, out of place and out of use. After decades, though, wood and metal tend to add a beauty of their own. In the photo an old screen window litters the land and I used

Neighborhoods form their own personalities. I don’t know who started the cycle in our watershed—which person reached out and did a little more and her neighbor in turn helped someone else—but we have a wonderful place to live. We have our own small (10 kid!) community school that my husband went to when he was a boy, that I

Like many native Humboldters, I married an invasive species-an outlander. And, I can see the good fresh ideas that came with intermarriage between my redneck culture and his occupying army of back-to-the-land folk. Perhaps that’s why I have a soft spot for many of Humboldt County’s exotics listed in a brochure put out by one of my favorite local groups-the

Just in time for your New Year’s Eve (and for all the other rare nights that Southern Humboldters go north), I have sacrificed myself to explore this dangerous upper cousin and return (Alive!) with my report. Unlike other expeditions to the far North, the danger is not in the getting there. Except for a rather longish piece of construction

This is a gross but I’m a crude country woman and I’m not afraid of addressing a tick-lish topic. Every person living in rural areas has their own process of dealing with ticks and I’ve noticed the methods often differ wildly from those recommended by internet sites. For starters, the sites always urge avoiding “walking in grassy, brushy, or heavily